Environmentally sealed electrical connectors are widely used in a number of applications to exclude moisture and/or dirt, which could otherwise lead to shorting of a set of coupled connectors to ground or to another electrical circuit or could degrade the quality of the electrical connection. One application for environmentally sealed electrical connectors, for example, is to electrically couple arrays or modules of photovoltaic cells, commonly known as solar cells, to a power distribution network. Typically, an environmentally sealed electrical connector includes a flexible member, such as a polymer O-ring or boot, which is fixed to one of a pair of mating halves of the connector and sealingly engages the other half when the connectors are joined or mated.
One problem with existing environmentally sealed electrical connectors is that the flexible member may interfere with the proper orientation and coupling of the two halves of the connector. This is particularly problematic in applications such as electrically coupling solar modules, where one or both halves of the electrical connector are covered by the module being coupled to the electrical circuit or where one or both halves of the connector is not hand-accessible, making the proper orientation and insertion of one half of the electrical connector into another even more difficult.